seven and seven is

The creators of Five Hotel – the Parisian design hotel with conceptual guestrooms based around the five senses – recently opened their newest numerically-inspired creation along the rue Berthollet in the Latin Quarter: Seven Hotel. (Don’t ask what happened to Six)

In atypical Parisian fashion, the hotel invites you on an out-of-the-ordinary space journey from the moment you enter the bubble-filled reception area. Three-dimensional images of bubbles float across huge television screens and drift off into the lounge and bar, where you can sip champagne and drink in the bubbly ambiance. (there’s nothing too literal or half-hearted about this concept) On each successive level of the hotel, the future/sexy/Amsterdam whorehouse theme continues, transporting guests to an alternate reality with trippy one-of-a-kind decor from floor to ceiling, like illuminated Plexiglass furniture and perfume dispensers linked to TV channels to rooms bathed in starlit skies of blue fiber optic lighting. A how-did-they-do-that highlight is the floating bed in the center of each room. Some rooms even include a levitating bathtub – now how did they do that?!?

Additionally, there are seven suites – get it? – each with a specific theme created by a different designer and aesthetically unrelated to the rest of the hotel. Go figure. The Alice in Wonderland suite evokes an imaginary world featuring clocks and mirrors. The Marie-Antoinette suite imagines what the eccentric queen’s boudoir might look like today (hint: leather), while the 007 suite puts you in the mind of the suave secret agent with a series of 007’s gadgets and an over-sized TV stocked with all the Bond films you could possibly want – and even some you don’t. Other rooms have even more conceptual themes – the on/off suite and Once Upon A Time room are full of inventiveness and Proustian surprises. But don’t let the suites fool you – the real wow factor comes in the spacey oversized singles. I mean, c’mon, when was the last time you slept in a levitating bed?